Breadcrumb Receives 10 Million Views with New App Debut

An iOS and Android app for an IoT connected “smart” nock and location marker, allowing hunters to find their arrows and gear.

The Challenge

Losing arrows and other hunting equipment can not only be costly, but searching for them out in the woods also wastes time and the rustling around can scare away potential game. So what if there was a way to track your arrow or equipment from your phone?

The Kickoff

Getting in the shoes of a hunter was the first step. Founder and avid hunter, Bryan Emrich, walked us through the process that bow hunters like himself go through. From trying to re-navigate to a less familiar hunting spot, to spending more time looking for arrows than hunting, the pain in Bryan’s voice was clear. This is why he wanted to launch with two core products: the nock and the location marker.

Nock

Attached on the rear of an arrow, the accelerometer uses a motion sensor to enable the tracking.

Location Marker

Used to keep track of things like tree stands, blind, trailcams, and other hunting equipment.

Mobile App Design

We mapped out the complete user experience from account creation to pairing, finding, and sharing a nock or location marker. After much discussion on how hunters were going to find their device, we designed both a meter to indicate proximity as well as a view map that pinpoints the area their device was last seen. We also designed an interactive walkthrough to pair a device and educate hunters on how to trigger light and sound from the app.

Visually we aimed to create a look that balanced a modern, tech, and outdoorsy feel through our color palette, typography, imagery choices.

The Technology

Breadcrumb’s mobile app was built using the Ionic development framework. Ionic allowed us to develop for iOS and Android with a single codebase. We worked with the hardware team to get the device to connect to our app and built the essential features.